MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — Jurors watched videos Friday showing Salman Rushdie being repeatedly stabbed on a stage in western New York while audience members gasped in horror at the attack that left the prized-winning novelist seriously wounded and blinded in one eye.
It was the first time chaotic footage of the assault has been played during the trial of Hadi Matar, 27, who is charged with attempted murder.
The video recorded by the Chautauqua Institution's house cameras on Aug. 12, 2022, shows fleeting views of Rushdie's assailant, dressed in black and wearing a black face mask, as he quickly strikes the author over and over before being tackled by bystanders and pinned to the stage.
Four videos, each shot from different angles, show only glimpses of the severely injured Rushdie, who fell to the stage near the attacker.
“Medic! Medic! We need a medic!” someone shouts.
Each man is surrounded by people, one group holding Matar down and the other tending to Rushdie's wounds. Someone brings a stack of towels and another elevates his legs.
Rushdie testified Tuesday about the roughly 15 stab wounds he sustained, including a blinding blow to his right eye and one that pierced the hand he raised to defend himself.
“I was dying. That was my predominant thought,” said Rushdie, who described seeing blood pouring onto his clothes.
The video demonstrated just how rapidly the morning devolved.
“Good morning, Chautauqua!” the smiling moderator, Sony Ton-Aime, says from a podium ahead of the planned discussion on keeping writers safe. Rushdie was to speak along with Henry Reese, the co-founder of City of Asylum Pittsburgh, a safe haven for persecuted authors and artists. Reese was also injured in the attack.
“Good morning,” the audience responds.
Gasps and screams then fill the amphitheater as the attack unfolds. Ton-Aime and institution staff run toward the fray and some audience members hoist themselves onto the stage to help.
It's not clear in the video that Rushdie has been stabbed, but a voice appearing to call 911 is heard relaying what happened.
“Someone's been stabbed, severely," the male voice says. “Salman Rushdie has been stabbed. Several times. On the main stage of the amphitheater.”
As jurors in the Chautauqua County courtroom watched the presentation on a large monitor, Matar kept his gaze downward, unable to see the video from the defense table, which was behind the screen.
Earlier Friday, the court played about three minutes of video from a state police investigator’s interview with Matar. In a small interrogation room at the police barracks in Jamestown, Matar leans forward in a chair, his forearms resting on his knees. He is wearing black pants, a green camouflage T-shirt and black jacket as seen in the institution's video and described in the testimonies of several witnesses.
“Sure, I’ll answer some questions,” Matar tells Investigator Travis Nagle. He appears calm and cooperative, spelling his first and last name and providing his phone number and address in Fairview, New Jersey.
Investigator Scott Mills testified that he took a statement from Rushdie and a DNA swab 10 days later, when the author was still hospitalized in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Rushdie, he said, had numerous obvious injuries and was heavily bandaged.
Stabbed and slashed in the head, eye, neck, torso, leg and hand, Rushdie spent 17 days at the Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation center.
The trial in Chautauqua County Court, a short distance from the Chautauqua Institution, is expected to last at least through next week. It is not known whether Matar will testify.
Matar was also indicted on federal terrorism charges related to the attack.
That indictment alleges Matar was motivated by a Hezbollah leader’s 2006 endorsement of a decades-old fatwa by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The fatwa followed publication of Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous.
The 1989 edict sent Rushdie into hiding for years, but the author of “Midnight’s Children” and “Victory City” traveled freely over the past quarter century after Iran announced it would not enforce the fatwa.
The video shows Matar being led away while others remain on stage with Rushdie.
“Given what has just happened, we would like to evacuate the hall,” a Chautauqua Institution administrator says to the now silent crowd.
“If you'd like to contemplate or meditate or pray,” she adds, "we'd appreciate that.”
